Computer

What happened to the Zen 3+ CPU, was it canceled by AMD?

The road maps of the different companies are changing for strategic reasons and many times products that were intended to be launched on the market and that had been leaked to the different insiders are taken down, other times instead they are the product of misunderstandings and confusion that end making the ball bigger. One of these cases is that of the Zen 3+ cores, let’s see what has happened to them.

The origin of the AMD Zen 3+ core rumor

Zen 3 3+ Chiplets

A few years ago AMD released a variant under the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 12nm node of the first Zen, which appeared under the Ryzen 2000 series and with the name of Zen +. Architecturally it was not a change from the 14nm version of the chip, but Lisa Su’s had simply moved its Zen core to a more advanced, but compatible, derivative manufacturing node.

This is the same case as the TSMC 6nm node, a more advanced version of the 7nm node that supports the same designs. This has been leveraged by AMD for the next generation of its APUs under the codename Rembrandt. This led to speculation on a Zen 3+ core under the 6nm node, which we were supposed to see both in the form of a new CCD Chiplet for a supposed new AMD Ryzen 6000 codenamed Warhol and in Rembrandt.

For some time now the rumors of a Zen 3+ core they have been deflated, the novelties in Rembrandt are more in other sections outside the CPU such as the use of RDNA 2 as an integrated GPU and the support for DDR5 and LPDDR5. It can be said that while AMD made the change of the CPU in its last generation APUs, in the next one it will do it all except the CPU. As for Warhol, he just dropped off the road map long ago.

We have already seen Zen 3+ and many have not noticed

AMD-Zen-4-Next-Gen-3D-V-Cache-Chiplet-Demo-Ryzen-9-5900X-CPU-_3

We have no doubt that the Zen 3D core that Lisa Su presented a few months ago at a conference is undoubtedly AMD’s bet to improve the performance of its Zen 3 cores and therefore would occupy the space of the rumored Zen 3+. Zen 3D technology based on the use of V-Cache does not require the construction of a 6 nm version of Zen 3, since the 7 nm model was already designed to place the V-Cache on top of it. So that there would be no such CCD Chiplet under TSMC’s 6nm node Rumors said, but there would be versions of the current Zen 3 with the V-Cache mounted on top.

It is said that performance improvement thanks to V-Cache is 15% and it can become a good answer to Intel’s Alder Lake. In any case and for marketing reasons it makes much more sense Zen 3D name than Zen 3+, since it is more defining of its technology. At the moment the rumors suggest that we will not see a Ryzen 6000 range based on Zen 3D and that the nomenclature of the Zen 3 models with V-Cache will be within the Ryzen 5000 series, but with the 3D designation at the end of their name. For example, the Ryzen 7 5800X with V-Cache could be renamed Ryzen 7 5800X-3D, although all this is still a rumor.

In any case, it would depend on the launch time of the CPUs based on Zen 4, it does not make sense for AMD to launch these processors to the market to launch those based on Zen 4 in the coming months. It may also be that both CPUs share space in the 2022 portfolio. In any case, in a few weeks or months we will have doubts.

Related Articles